Peter Doran

Biography

eter Doran is a Professor and Endowed Chair of Geology and Geophysics at Louisiana State University. He's an active research scientist and a veteran of numerous expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic in the pursuit of studying climate, ecosystem change and astrobiology. He leads a team annually in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica as part of the National Science Foundation's Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network, of which the McMurdo site (MCM) is one of 26 around the world. He has been a co-PI on the MCM LTER since 1999. Dr. Doran is co-investigator on two NASA Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring Planets (ASTEP) projects. The first is an extension of the Environmentally Non-Disturbing Under-ice Robotic ANtarctiC Explorer (ENDURANCE) project which deployed an autonomous underwater vehicle in Lake Bonney in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. The new project is called SIMPLE (Sub-ice Investigation of Marine and Planetary-analog Ecosystems), and the new vehicle was deployed under the McMurdo Ice Shelf in 2015. The second ASTEP project is VALKYRIE which is building a laser-powered ice melting vehicle which will penetrate and sample glaciers in Alaska. An effective extension of the VALKYRIE project called SPINDLE has been provided Phase A funding. He has also been the lead investigator on a recent grant from NASA Exobiology, co-funded by the National Science Foundation, to deploy autonomous instrumentation in the dry valley lakes to acquire winter over data for the first time. Dr. Doran serves on various NASA review panels and working groups focused on future exploration of Mars and other locations of astrobiological interest. He is a sitting member of the NASA Subcommittee on Planetary Protection. He was also recently chair of the Technical Advisory Board for the Ice Drilling Design and Operations (IDDO) which is part of the NSF U.S. Ice Drilling Program.

Research Interest

With broad research interests focused on field techniques in aquatic, climate, Quaternary and astrobiological sciences, Dr. Doran has conducted more than ten field seasons in the Canadian High Arctic and at last count about twenty in the Antarctic in this pursuit. Specific research areas include modern hydrological and biogeochemical processes in polar lake systems, and the use of this modern calibration in paleoenvironmental reconstruction, paleolimnology and sedimentology of perennially ice-covered Antarctic lakes, problems in Quaternary dating in the Antarctic dry valleys, biogeochemistry of deeply ice-covered lakes, physical controls on and ecological impact of persistent lake ice covers, modern controls on carbon isotopic signatures in lacustrine systems, and the use of the dry valleys as analogs to help in the search for evidence of extant or extinct life on other worlds. He has also conducted research in microclimatology of polar regions using automated weather stations. This research has been mostly connected to defining the climate controls on ice covers and modeling of polar lake systems. He also has an interest in subglacial environments. Interests in global change and communicating science lead to Dr. Doran be named a Leopold Fellow in 2008 by Standford University's Woods Institute for the Environment.